Flash Mobs

I heard about flash mobs a few years ago, but I never did any research on them until now.  What I found was incredible.

Obviously, flash mobs are a product of advanced communication tools (txt, email, FB) that allow mass-messages to be sent in seconds.  It is hard to imagine a flash mob being organized by telegraph or over the phone.  I picture someone sitting down with a rotary phone and a list of a hundred people -- not gonna happen.  But now someone can create a Facebook group and invite the people they want in on the prank, or type up a txt message and send it to dozens of contacts.

I suppose I should define "flash mob."  It is a mob that comes seemingly out of nowhere, in a public place, and does something (usually) harmless and completely random.  The bystanders usually catch a good show, especially when the mob performs a dance, which seems to be the most popular type of flash mob.  Flash mobs can also pull off hilarious pranks, like this one that I found on Youtube:

Flash mobs are a great example of how the digital world can help us interact with the analog world.  People have been texting and emailing each other to make plans for years, and flash mobs are an extreme version of that act.

Reading up on these things makes me hope that some day soon I get a text message that invites me to be a part of one.

Technology and Language

Is modern technology (texting, twitter, the internet in general) changing language?  The answer is yes, within those forms.  Many people don't use complete sentences when composing a text message.  Character limits are one reason for this.  A Twitter post is confined to 140 characters, and to fit a particular message into that, without spilling into a second post, people make sacrifices.  For example, people use shorthand techniques like w/ for the word "with" and the abbreviations made popular by text messaging, like OMG and WTF.

Comment fields on Youtube and other sites are a great place to look if you want to believe that the English language is deteriorating, as well as civility.  These comment fields are basically a mixture of personal attacks written with poor grammar.  An inevitably, at some point, someone will point out another's poor grammar and be called a "Grammar Nazi."  The comments field on Youtube for the video entitled "Slash Solo Godfather Theme" is a perfect example.  The first page is filled with personal attacks such as "Dumb bitch."  And almost nobody capitalized the first letter of a sentence.  But hey, it's the comment field under a guitar solo video, so...

One more interesting thing I found was This page from PBS about language changes over time, mainly verbal.  There is some very interesting stuff in there, like where language changes originate, and what television's role is in language changes.